Moon-drilling robot to collect frozen soil samples in 2020

Europe and Russia plan to send a moon-drilling robot to Earth's
satellite in 2020, where it will penetrate the north or south poles
and return with frozen soil samples.

The Lunar Polar Sample Return mission ideally hopes to dig for
samples in craters, where two-billion-year-old impacts have left
deep materials nearer the surface.

However, until the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian
Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has the technology to do so, they
are limited to only drilling in areas where the surface is
permanently illuminated by the sun.

A "Rover with advanced navigation across shadow zones" is on
their wish list, but until then the plan is to use the 2016 ExoMars
mission's drill. That drill has already been tested in -80C
temperatures, but will need to be tweaked if it's to withstand the
Moon's atmosphere -- at its extremes, the surface can reach 100C in
the daytime and less than -150C at night.

Contributing to the difficulties, the soil then has to be
immediately frozen and maintained at temperatures of -114C to
prevent certain compounds evaporating.

Ahead of the mission the ESA is also launching an investigative
mission in 2017 to test technologies like the visual navigation and
hazard detection systems, and another mission to the Moon's south
pole in 2018. The latter, according to ESA official Bruno Gardini, is linked to
Nasa's plan to one day launch a Neil Armstrong Lunar Outpost base
at the south pole.

If that base (or future Moon-based robot Nascar races) are to ever be a reality, missions
like these are essential for discovering how infrastructure will
need to be adapted to withstand the structural environment.
Building materials may need to be altered to survive on the dry
surface, which is covered in electrically charged dust that sticks to everything and could present significant
obstacles.

The Moon could also have a "dust atmosphere", where these charged particles are in
constant motion, prompted by UV rays and radiation from the sun.
These swirling harsh dust particles could not only harm
infrastructure (which it would continually batter in the solar
winds), but also individuals manning a base -- it could seep in and
be inhaled by astronauts, damaging their cardiovascular systems and
possibly resulting in long-term respiratory disease.

Samples collected could go a long way in adapting our approach
to building future Moon cities -- unlike those Apollo-era artefacts
Nasa astronauts were recently
granted ownership of, the robot will send these Moon
samples straight back to labs on Earth were they will be
investigated for their novel properties.

The research mission -- which is due to launch from Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan -- could potentially be scuppered,
however, as issues of funding and program launches are to be
discussed at the ESA member states' meeting in 2015. Considering
that's the same year as the UK's next general election, it will be
interesting to see how national budget constraints affect launch
timetables -- Nasa's budget has already been stripped, suggesting any future Moon base is more likely to
boast a Japanese or Russian name. ESA is bound to contribute the
drill technology, the sample handling system and other onboard
instruments.